CONGRATULATIONS, MAGENTO STACK EXCHANGE IS GRADUATING!

A few weeks ago, I quietly dropped a comment on the 2015 moderator nomination post to say that we on the SE team wouldn't be appointing a new pro tem moderator... because you had been approved for graduation, and we wanted to give you a moderator election instead. The comment didn't seem to get much attention, which was just fine with me; I intentionally didn't make a big deal about it because we didn't have the details ironed out at the time.

But now we do! (Or, at least, we're a lot closer.) As I alluded to above, the fact that you've graduated means that your pro tem mods' terms of service are ending, and you now get to elect your own moderators from within your community. Magento's first moderator election will begin on Monday, August 17, 2015. Please join me in taking a moment to thank Alex, benmarks, Marius and your past pro tem mods for all their work getting the site to where it is today!

Before you get too excited about the upcoming election, there is a bit more news; this isn't just an election announcement. As those of you who follow network-wide events may know, we announced some changes to the way we think about the site lifecycle earlier this year, and the response to that announcement made us start work on breaking up the elements of graduation into independent pieces. On Monday, when your election starts, you'll be the first site that gets to try out this new "graduation without design" approach.

Specifically, this means:

you will no longer see the "beta" label attached to your site's name

you will become eligible for question migration paths with the rest of the network

you will be able to select your own community ads

Since you are the first site to get these features outside of dev, there may be more bugs than normal. Please report any that you see here on meta like you would any other bug.

Wohooo this is the moment we (MSE people) waiting a long for it is looking like a festival with graduation and moderator elections, way to go congrats to everyone and All the Best for nominators
– dh47Aug 18 '15 at 4:01

This is a great news... Thanks everyone who made this really possible..

We together worked for this a lot. Finally it paid off..

First of all, Thanks to Marius, the great teacher. His work in this site is unimaginable. As a member and moderator of this site, he is always close to us and is directing us in the right way.

Second Kudos goes to #MageStackDay. Thanks Sander and Anna for organizing those amazing days. It brought us from 68% to 82% answer ratio. I can say this event is definitely a historic event for us, the magento community.

Thanks Benmarks and Alex. You are awesome, we are sure.

I want to mention Alanstorm, Fabian, Amit for their amazing contributions to this community..

Finally, congratulations every one... thanks for bring us from beta.. Now inhale and exhale Magento. This is our independence day !!!!